Now that Google has deprecated 1% of cookies, the clock is ticking for advertisers and agencies to future-proof their media buying strategies. Cookies offered precision and scale in ad tech, and their deprecation leaves trading teams with more fragmentation and complexity to manage than ever before.
To adapt, traders need new solutions to simplify operations, consolidate tactics, streamline optimization and measure results. While new IDs are certainly part of the puzzle, there are other solutions buyers should explore.
There’s an emerging category that presents a valuable cookieless solution: the curated deal.
What is a curated deal?
Curated deals are multipublisher deal IDs that enable the bundling of audience, supply, optimization and/or measurement value into a single package for buyers. They can bundle sophisticated audience- and supply-targeting strategies to simplify buyer workflows. Since curated deals are dynamic and flexible, curators can optimize them over time to augment DSP algorithms and boost outcomes.
Retail media networks pioneered the use of curated deals to deliver custom audiences, discounted premium supply and ROAS measurement to buyers via deal IDs. Today, curated deals are gaining traction to address the audience fragmentation challenge.
For example, a curated deal can bundle contextual audiences, alternative IDs, modeled audiences, IP audiences and publisher deals into a single container and influence delivery across each cohort. Matching these audiences on the sell side will become even more important in a cookieless world in which higher match rates can be achieved to counter shrinking pools of addressable inventory.
In a recent discussion with Drew Stein, Audigent’s CEO, he made a compelling case for the curated deal as a game-changer in ad tech. “The future of ad tech is curated,” he said. According to Drew, curated deals provide the flexibility and optimization that buyers need to succeed. It’s a perspective that challenges the status quo, and, frankly, it’s hard to disagree with him.
The flexibility of the curated deal will be critical as ad tech dramatically transforms in 2024.
Alternative IDs are necessary but not sufficient
While alternative IDs are a necessary innovation and response to cookie deprecation, ad tech can’t rely on them exclusively for targeting. That’s because addressable inventory will soon become much scarcer and, consequently, more expensive.
It’s forecasted that, in 2025, 75% of open web ad opportunities will be unidentified, compared to 30% today.[1] With the supply of addressable inventory dropping by more than half, prices are expected to soar. Advertisers will always demand addressable audiences, but other tactics will be essential.
Instead of thinking of new IDs as a direct replacement for cookies, buyers must accept that they will need a portfolio approach of targeting tactics. That means managing spend allocation across alternative IDs plus other audience sources such as contextual, modeled audiences, IPs (while they persist) and publisher deals.
In a DSP, managing spend across each of these tactics will create a lot of complexity. Curated deals allow for the bundling of multiple targeting tactics to be consolidated for trader convenience, either by agency centers of excellence or by curators of custom audiences. They have the power to bias spend toward addressable sources while permitting controlled delivery across non-addressable sources to drive scale.
Non-addressable tactics will become a green field of opportunity
Buying non-addressable inventory is a hard pill to swallow. But buyers not exploring non-addressable tactics are missing out on significant opportunities. Targeting high attention or contextually relevant environments has long been a reliable advertising tactic, even before the era of cookie-based advertising. Once cookies are deprecated, massive pools of newly non-addressable inventory will plummet in price, creating opportunity for savvy marketers and traders to drive ROI.
In the financial world, traders drive value by investing in undervalued assets. In advertising, the same concept can apply. Trading teams should be thinking about how cookie deprecation creates new opportunities. Non-addressable targeting tech has become more sophisticated, especially in contextual, modeling and supply-curation strategies.
Uncovering even moderate improvements in non-addressable targeting can translate into huge performance benefits given the massive scale and lower prices available.
Curated deals can support non-addressable targeting by bundling smarter supply management, negotiated publisher deals, modeled audiences or contextual tactics together for buyer convenience. As new best practices for non-addressable buying are discovered or refined, they can be productized as supply playbooks and deployed to any DSP for easy trader activation.
Some performance metrics like conversions won’t be available for non-addressable tactics when cookies disappear. But we can admit that programmatic campaigns are usually not 100% responsible for these outcomes (despite what reporting dashboards show). Causal influence has always been challenging to estimate. Campaigns designed to measure incrementality, sales lift or brand lift can offer the attribution brands need to run non-addressable tactics with confidence.
Managing growing fragmentation
When cookies disappear, traders will need to harness more targeting tactics for every campaign to reach comparable levels of scale and control. But most trading teams simply aren’t resourced to handle more complexity and fragmentation, making new partnerships and operating models worth exploring.
Curated deals can facilitate new partnerships without the friction of IOs, contracts or integrations. They allow traders to partner with their centers of excellence or curators who can act as an extension of their team. Since curated deals are dynamic, optimizable packages, curators can support buyers with customized solutions, productized supply playbooks or optimization support. This flexibility is already unlocking operational innovations and making collaboration easier between buyers and their preferred partners.
While curation has received recent buzz, the potential that it offers buyers in a cookieless world warrants more attention and exploration. Microsoft understands the looming challenges cookie deprecation presents and can be a strategic partner for navigating the future of advertising with solutions like curated deals.
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[1] Reaching consumers in a cookieless, privacy-driven world | Yahoo Advertising (yahooinc.com)
